


Journal of Celdra Lanari

by Dahne10



Series: Nartes [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Homebrew Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 21,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28868478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dahne10/pseuds/Dahne10
Summary: The following is a copy of the recovered journal of one Celdra Lanari, a kalashatar cleric of Yna.
Series: Nartes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117226





	1. Preface

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following is derived from my weekly DnD game. It takes place in a completely homebrew world. There will be a bunch of additional lore for this world located in another work called Nartes World Lore, as I could not fit it in with this.

_The following is a copy of the journal of one Celdra Lanari, a kalashatar cleric of Yna. Unfortunately, not all of its contents survived. One curious thing to note is that it seems that Celdra refers to herself in the plural, using we and us instead of I and me, though she does reportedly identify as a female. This oddity can be explained by her race, as kalashatar are beings that consist of two soul fused into one body, though it is to be noted that there are few records of other kalashatar refering to themselves in such a manner._


	2. Sypheros, 4, 334

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a date. Sypheros is the month, it is the 4th day of the year 334. For this calendar, there are 12 months in a year, 4 weeks in a month, and 7 days per week. Each month only has 28 days. The months are as follows: Zarantyr, Olarune, Therendor, Eyre, Dravago, Nymm, Lharvion, Barrakas, Rhaan, Sypheros, Aryth, and Vult

Atrox and we arrived in Sano today. The city is currently holding a large celebration for the coronation of queen Kalyn. We started the night off at this festive. There were many games and venders around, plus everything was free. The catch was that you had to give a blood sample. We were immediately suspicious of this, as we are aware of what one can do with blood. The vendors said that it was in order to keep track of who had done what. Atrox did not care and gave them many samples of his blood. During the festival, we saw a strange cloaked person that seemed to cast some sort of magic on us. At the time, we were not sure what occurred, as we had felt no effect and all of our belongings were in place. After a time, we all gathered in the palace courtyard for the queen’s address. This is where things began to go downhill.

  
The newly crowned queen started off by announcing the arrest of a group of adventurers. This group consisted of a human melee ranger, a goblin druid, a kalashatar paladin, and a half-elf sorcerer. She announced that they were going to be killed and executed because prophecy said that they would kill her. Ourselves and a halfling ranger spoke up a asked the queen a few questions. It turns out that the prophecy gave rather vague descriptions of the individuals who would supposedly kill her, and she thought that it was them because they were a fully formed party that was rumored to have dealings with the Crowlord. Does this sound like a self-fulfilling prophecy to anyone else? Just as the guards were about to cart them off, that hooded figure appeared again and stopped time. There were only four of us that were not affected, ourselves, Atrox, the halfling ranger from earlier, and a half elf wizard that was elsewhere in the crowd. The cloaked individual lead us to the attic of an inn. There, we discovered that this cloaked person was the Crowlord and he wanted to enlist us to help him in his effort to impede the Neverdreamed. This immediately piqued our interest, as we have been looking into them for quite some time. Many believe that the Neverdreamed does not exist, as it erases all evidence of their acts. It is rather difficult to prove something when all that you have to work with is what isn’t there. We almost immediately decided that we would help, as it offered a chance to learn more about the Neverdreamed, as well as the possibility of learning how to defend oneself from them. Even if we learned nothing from this, we would rather go by the Crowlord’s hand than the Neverdreamed’s. They would provide a much kinder fate. They went on to tell us that the reason for the kerfuffle at the coronation was that all of the diviners agreed on the races of the next group of great heroes and that it was an attempt to draw out those individuals. The wizard, whose name is Telia, was quite skeptical of the Crowlord, for good reason. The ranger, whose name is Aubrey, was as well. The Crowlord offered everyone something that they really wanted. Atrox was told that if he followed this path, some runes on his scroll would be unlocked. Telia was told that he could become as powerful as a sorcerer. Aubrey was promised answers to something that happened in her past. The Crowlord tried to temp us by telling us that it would help us keep the balance, but we needed no convincing. They told us that if we wanted to verify some of what they were telling us, that the wizard should go to the magic collage and remove a scroll from a pedestal. They also told us that we should destroy the blood samples that were collected from us at the festival. Somehow, this scroll would verify the Crowlord’s claims that everything that Telia knew about magic was wrong. It seems that during the festival, Telia and Aubrey had meet the Archmage Tenil and had been invited to help them with a research project and an infestation.

  
After the Crowlord left, we began to exit the building. When we reached the ground floor, we ran into the owner. He was terrified of us and quite cowardly. Telia went on to befriend him, even though we think that she was not trying to. The owner told us that his name was Worthless, which we believe is a terrible thing to name someone. What kind of parent does that to their child? After he told us his name, Atrox started calling him Worth as a nickname, something that the rest of us quickly adopted. Eventually, he gave Telia a hug and told us that we could stay as long as we wanted. Tomorrow we plan on heading to the collage to investigate what we were told.


	3. Sypheros, 5, 334

When we ventured downstairs this morning, we found that Worth had cooked us breakfast. It tasted rather good, though there was something not quite right about it, as it wasn’t entirely agreeable to our digestive tracks, though nothing came of it. After breakfast, we headed off the collage, though before we got there, Telia stopped at a bookstore. She bought a book on magic. As part of the purchase, she had to sign a magical contract. The only odd thing about it was that it would make Telia think about selling any new book she acquired to the shop. Once we arrived at the college, Telia was taken off to assist, ourselves and Atrox were taken off to help package the blood samples that were collected at the festival, and Aubrey was taken off to deal with the infestation. This was about when things stopped going right.

Telia told us later that they had her interviewing people while they were charmed. While they were bringing her to the location, they passed the room that the scroll was kept it. The door was wide open and there were no guards. As soon as Telia had a break, she slipped out and when to that room. She had an unseen servant grab the scroll from the pedestal. Nothing happened until she touched the scroll. When she did, it burned her and put the idea of the fire bolt spell in her mind. Then the Archmage showed up. Telia threw the scroll at her, the Archmage then proceeded to explode, or more accurately had an explosion centered on her. She survived it just fine but was rendered unconscious. Telia then had the unseen servant pick the scroll up again and left with Telia’s familiar, Jinx. They headed back to the inn.

Aubrey had been taken to a room. Once she entered this room, she was trapped. After a bit, they preceded to pump some sort of gas into the room. Aubrey proceeded to ignite the gas and it promptly exploded. It seems that there is a theme to this day’s misfortunes. She was still trapped in the room, but she was able to send one of her wasps to go get help from Telia. Once she heard that Aubrey was in trouble, Telia started making her way towards her.

While this was going on, ourselves and Atrox were packaging the needled. They were all very nicely labeled and organized, so it was not difficult to find ours. A few applications of sacred flame later, and the problem was taken care of. Then we heard the explosions. Telia had managed to find the room that Aubrey was trapped in and entered. She was able to leave easily with Aubrey, as the door had simply been illusioned away. After that we all managed to meet up again and tried to leave the building. The guards would not let us leave the area and ushered us to the area where they were gathering everyone who had been inside. Then the wall of the building blew up. The Archmage had regained consciousness and was looking for Telia. Before the Archmage could locate her target, Aubrey started yelling at her about how they had tried to kill her. The Archmage then proceeded to actually try and kill her and cast a fireball centered on Aubrey. After that, she was unconscious. We then went over to her and healed her. During the distraction that Aubrey made, Telia teleported away and headed back to the inn. Eventually the rest of us met her there. When we arrived, we found that there was a group of rowdy orcs that had entered the inn. We almost came to blows, as they were terrifying and abusing poor Worth and they tried to take our rooms from us. Telia then cast calm emotions on everyone in the room, then she cast suggestion on the leader of the group for them to all leave. She managed to resolve the situation peacefully and afterwards Worth gave Telia another hug. We then proceeded to investigate the scroll. It seems that whenever the arcane casters touch it, there is a chance that they will be lit on fire. Telia eventually concluded that this scroll was a very powerful artifact that made the cantrip fire bolt much easier to cast for arcane casters, but also less powerful. It seems that this is why wizards are less powerful than their sorcerer counterparts. The spells that wizards are taught don’t actually cast the spell, but access scrolls like this and the scroll casts it. Then the Crowlord came back. They told us that if we had decided to help him, we should head to the Town of Tevil, which is ruled by Baron Tenik. He did not actually tell us what we needed to do there, but that it should be apparent once we reached our destination. After that, we all retreated to our rooms. Tomorrow, we shall try to find a caravan that is headed to our destination.


	4. Sypheros, 6, 334

This morning, Aubrey told us that she was not going any further with us and left. So, one member short, we proceeded to head off to the merchant’s guild looking for a caravan that we could be hired to guard to the Town of Tevil. The clerk said that they only had one caravan that was going the long way to the town. After a bit of conversation, the clerk lead us to a back room and told us of a merchant that was going the shorter route, but that her cargo wasn’t exactly legal in the Eparchy. We also were introduced to Seven of Spades, a kobald druid, that was also looking to be hired as a guard. We decided to meet with this merchant. The clerk then lead us to the merchant’s room and promptly left. The merchant’s name is Lisath and she is a goliath. It turns out that she is transporting spell scrolls to the United Provinces. She offered us 50 gold a peace and a spell scroll or a magic item as payment. The trip would take eight weeks and we were to make a stop in Etalek. We accepted and two hours later, we were leaving the city. Once we reached the gate, we were stopped as the guards wanted to search our carriage. Telia cast minor illusion and disguised herself and a barrel. Seven turned into a lizard and we put him in our backpack, though he then crawled onto our shoulder. Telia cast suggestion on the guard and suggested to him that he did not need to search our carriage. He started to leave, but then one of his co-workers whispered something in his ear. He then came back and told us that the search was not random, but that they were looking for some fugitives. He then opened one of the barrels and found the spell scrolls. The guard then proceeded to mention how a less scrupulous guard might be tempted to take them. We warned him not to do that and Atrox successfully intimidated him into leaving. He then received a message from a sending stone and told us that they were closing the gate behind us, as they had found one of the fugitives that they were looking for and wanted to make sure that the others could not leave the city. The description of the person they caught matched that of Aubrey. We then left the city. So far, it has been quiet, though we do not expect it to stay that way.


	5. Sypheros, 11, 334

We have been on the road for 5 days now. As we were setting up camp tonight, we were attacked by a godless tree. It had the ability to become resistant to whatever elemental damage we hit it with and also add that damage type to its attacks. It was a rough fight. It surprised us and managed to take the shard box. Atrox set it on fire, and Telia proceeded to do the same. Seven hit it with blight, and we summoned our spiritual weapon to try and hack off the branch that was holding the shard box. As we tried to step away, the tree hit us and we were knocked unconscious. It then proceeded to do the same to Seven. Atrox and Telia kept attacking the tree, and eventually ourselves and Seven regained consciousness. We then proceeded to Balance with the tree. It was not a fun time for me. While we did heal a little bit, our wisdom was replaced with that of the tree. Trees, it turns out, are not very wise. It was suddenly much harder to cast our spells. Luckily, the others managed to quickly kill it. Soon after, the Balance faded and I was returned to my former state. We shall see what other events transpire on our journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Celdra is referring to "balancing" with the tree, she is referencing a homebrew ability. When she does this, if the target fails the wisdom save, her health averages with the target, they each share one random base stat (in this case she received the tree's wisdom and the tree received her constitution), each of them give the other a racial feature, and they share tags.


	6. Sypheros, 15, 334

Today’s event was what we presume to have been a pack of godless wolves. Seven heard them howling. He them proceeded to turn into a wolf and convince them that there was nothing around here to find and that the trail that they had picked up earlier did not lead anywhere. We got lucky this time.


	7. Sypheros, 16, 334

After we set up camp, we heard wolves again along with the sound of racing carriages. We flew towards the sounds to investigate and saw a pack of about 100 wolves chasing a caravan of three carriages. The caravan accidently hit a rock and left the road. It was heading straight towards us. Seven made an ice ramp to divert the carriages and used druidcraft to erase our sent. We cast silence on the camp. When the carriages hit the ramp, one of their wheels broke. Telia conjured a wall of fire around the now immobile carriage to protect it from the wolves. The other two carriages kept going and ten of the wolves stayed behind while the others continued the chase. Telia fireballed half of them and we put the other half to seep, then the party proceeded to kill them. Seven raised one of the wolves from the dead. The carriage had two guards and the driver. Lisath permitted them to travel with us, as they did not have shards of their own, and ourselves and Seven fixed their broken wheel. This event might prove fortunate for us, as we might be able to use them to sneak our contraband into Etalek.


	8. Sypheros, 23, 334

When we stopped for camp, we noticed several paw prints of large cats on the ground. Telia sent her familiar Jinx to follow the tracks. One of the large cats, which we later identified as displacer beasts, picked her up like a kitten. She was then treated as such. Seven turned into a kitten and followed. He then received the same treatment. After a few hours, they both came back. Not long after, we heard the displacer beasts howl with rage as they discovered that their newly adopted kittens had disappeared. Seven removed our sent and we silenced the area. Eventually they left. We should reach Etalek soon. We shall see what challenges that city provides.


	9. Sypheros, 26, 334

Today we had an interesting encounter with Seven, or I suppose we should say that we had an interesting encounter with the Great Sporeling. Apparently, Teila had asked Seven to grow a strange seed that she had acquired. When Seven did, it grew into a winter fey plant that likes to eat flesh. Seven was severely injured, and it seems that this injury brought forth the Great Sporeling. Eventually, Teila got my attention because Seven was bleeding out. Though I did not end up healing him because the Great Sporeling told us that they had it under control. At first, ourselves and Teila were rather concerned about Seven, as he has some sort of entity attached to him. We had a discussion with the Great Sporeling. It turns out that they are a magical fungus that requires a host to live and utilizes a hive mind, Seven is currently that host. It seems that Seven’s family considered him a runt and decided to sacrifice him to the Great Sporeling, though the Great Sporeling has said that they did not ask for the sacrifice. I believe them. Eventually the Great Sporeling healed Seven and we found out that he was completely ok with the situation. Though it also turns out that the Great Sporeling is slowly eating and replacing Seven’s brain. We offered to do more research on them and try to figure out a way for Seven’s death to not be necessary, but Seven did not want us to. Teila seemed very uncomfortable with the situation, but she does not understand what it is like to be two who are one. If Seven is ok with the current situation, then there is nothing for us to do. If he ever changes his mind though, we will be there to help him with whatever he wants our help with.


	10. Aryth, 4, 334

We finally arrived at Etalek today. Seven and Teila managed to smuggle the scrolls in without much issue. Teila disguised them as bulk dried goods and Seven managed to chase the guards away before they could properly inspect the cart with threats of giving them a long lecture about the preservation process of food. It was quite a brilliant play. Once we entered the city, we had a few hours to ourselves while Lisath completed her business. The trouble started almost right away. Teila wanted to go to a bookstore and we decided to accompany her. Before we entered, a stranger in a red cloak tossed us a coin with a falcon head on it. We were intrigued and followed them into the alley. They warned is that there was an inquisitor named Kala after us. They described Kala as a male asamar with emerald eyes, silver hair, and beard that moves on its own. They claimed to be a part of the Order of the Watchful Falcon and that they wanted to help us escape the city and that we should gather the party and our wares and meet them in a few hours. When I asked them why they were helping us, they said that it was because the purpose of their order was to help people and do good in the world. Can you spot how much they got wrong about our order? Practically every detail. No member wears bright red clothing. Our colors are a neutral brown, light grey, and dark grey. Member of our order would be wearing some such combination of those colors, as we are. Our order also does now use a falcon head on a coin as a symbol. And the biggest mistake they made is in the order’s purpose. Our purpose is to keep the balance, not to simply do good in the world. So, this was obviously a trap. When we spoke to Teila later, we told her as much.  
It seems that Atrox also had a similar encounter to ours. While he was wandering around town, someone in an orange cloak tried to grab his attention. Atrox tried to just walk past them, but eventually they got his attention. They flashed him the same coin that they showed us. They told him the same things as we were told, but they also gave him a magic stone that would supposedly teleport us all out of the city to use just in case we can’t meet them for some reason.

Seven did not meet any of these farces while he was out. He made is way over to the part of the city where the Order of the Runic Hammer has sway. It seems that Seven wants to get enough votes in order to join the order. We must admit, we do not understand much how this order works and their vote system. Seven met someone and helped them distribute their votes in the most efficient manner to achieve whatever their goal was. They then gave Seven their two leftover votes as a thank you and directed them to a place where they might be able to get more. Said place turned out to be a sketchy establishment where you could trade votes for votes. Again, we are not sure how that whole system works.

After we met up, we all told each other what occurred. Teila cast identify on the stone that Atrox was given. The stone did not do exactly as advertised. It turns out that when activated, that stone would teleport whoever it was attuned to plus everyone they considered their allies withing 30 feet somewhere in a downward direction. She could not tell exactly where. While we were preoccupied with this, Jinx noticed someone in a yellow cloak holding a compass and watching the ally. After some experimentation, we found out that that compass tracks Teila. She stayed at the bookstore while ourselves and Atrox head out to look for Kala and Seven goes to track down Lisath and tell her what was going on. What could possibly go wrong when we split the party? Unfortunately, everything.

It turns out, that the Inquisitor HQ is shared with the Order of the Radiant Dragon. They also hate each other. One would think that this would make for a stressful work environment. Whoever decided to put these two groups in the same building is not the brightest. We are fairly certain that it was members of the Order of the Radiant Dragon that were attempting, and failing, to impersonate members of the Order of the Watchful Falcon. Since our likely enemies were sharing a building with our possible allies, we decided that it was better for Atrox to enter the building alone, since he is a human he can blend in better. He asked the secretary for the inquisitors where we could find Kala. The secretary inquired why he was looking for Kala. Atrox replied saying that he was looking for Kala because we were told not to. This is when Atrox almost died. The secretary locked the room, attacked Atrox almost immediately and came very close to killing him. Instead of trying to fight, he did the smart thing and ran, breaking down the door and blocking the doorway with his great sword on the way. We then saw Atrox run out of the building and follow him. Then, as fate would have it, we see a certain someone on road. The same person that Atrox almost died trying to find. After all of that, we ran into Kala on the street. He called for Atrox to stop and asked him if someone had performed magic on him, as he was quite scorched. Atrox then told him what happened, and we followed Kala back to the Inquisitor HQ. There, we found a broken great sword on the ground and no secretary. We told Kala everything about the false members of the Order of the Watchful Falcon and about them tracking Teila. He agreed to help us and also thought that they were from the Order of the Radiant Dragon. It turns out that Kala knows Lisath. He gave us an amulet that would hide Teila from their tracking magic and told us that he could get us out of the city. At this point, we decided to split up yet again. Ourselves and Atrox went to go retrieve Teila, while Kala went to go get Lisath and hopefully Seven.  
During this time, Seven was having his own misadventure. He went to a tavern and asked around trying to find Lisath. Someone eventually points him towards the Valk’s temple. When he arrived there and entered the temple, he found that everyone inside was fighting. There was some enchantment on the place that compelled people to fight. No one was using weapons and there were clerics on standby to save those who where knocked unconscious. Seven managed to find Lisath. She was using the eternal brawl to covertly sell her wares. He told her what was going on. Lisath’s response was odd. She chucked Seven into the temple and kept on fighting. Seven managed to resist the compulsion to fight, and ran through the crowd and out the doors, taking quite the beating along the way.

Eventually, we all met up again, though Kala had to know Lisath unconscious in order to get her out of the temple. We then used Kala’s teleportation circle to leave the city. It teleported us 50 miles outside of town. When we arrived, we found wolves attacking our ravager. They quickly fled when we approached. Now, we are on our way to our next destination, the Town of Tevil. Unfortunately, I doubt that our journey there will be quiet.


	11. Aryth, 11, 334

As predicted, we can never have an uneventful journey. This time, we saw an unconscious woman in the snow next to an overturned cart. We cautiously approached and once in range, we cast healing word on the woman. She wakes up and introduces herself as Julia. She says that she is traveling along. This imminently make us suspicious, as only those who want to die travel out here alone. Our suspicions were correct, as we are shortly attacked by a large group of bandits that were hiding. They were after our lesser shards. It was rather sad how easily they went down, though they did manage to greatly harm one of us. Teila burned a large portion of them to death with a wall of fire. Seven activated some kind of spore cloud and slashed at the bandits with his claws. Atrox attacked them with his sword. We cast Spirit Guardians and let the radiant light burn some away and we attacked with our cantrips too. Eventually, they were either all dead or they ran away. Unfortunately, they managed to catch Teila in some unfortunate circumstances and killed her. It seems that she had retreated into the carriage for cover. They threw a bottle of poison and a torch in there with her. Unfortunately, the cloud of poison was combustible. She did not survive the resulting explosion. Seven put out the fire as soon as he could. Luckily, Lisath was able to revive Teila using a scroll, so we did not loose a member of our group today.


	12. Vult, 4, 334

We reached the Town of Tevil today. There is something gravely wrong here. When we reached the gate earlier today, there was no one there. The drawbridge was up and the moat almost seemed to be made out of souls. We shouted and tried to get someone’s attention, but there was no response. We flew up to the wall and saw that there were guards patrolling, but their eyes were a milky white and they did not respond to us. We then touched down on the wall, and the guard immediately attacked us. We then returned to the group. As soon as we were no longer on the wall, the guard stop paying any attention to us. While the group was trying to come up with a plan, we saw some purple and blue lighting strike somewhere in the city. Totally not ominous at all, definitely something we don’t have to worry about, not at all. We do hope that our sarcasm is coming through. Sometimes that can be difficult with the written word. We then ran another test, we flew up onto the wall, this time with the amulet that Kala gave Teila. The guards did not notice us. Eventually, we all just ended up going over the wall. We flew Seven and Jinx over, while Teila teleported herself and Atrox. The city was immediately on alert, though we do not see how we could have done anything else. We only have on amulet of nondetection, and it would be stupid to go in here alone. We ran and hid, then Seven turned into a large creature and digs us a hole to hide in. Seven kept digging and eventually we hit a cavern system and heard voices. We follow the voices and find them behind what appears to be a hidden door. Eventually, they let us in. Inside we found two people, an older man named John and a younger man named Henry. We immediately decide that we do not like Henry. He asked Seven if he knew how much he was worth and acted like a selfish slaver who was only there for the chance to make a profit. He wanted to just hunker down underground and wait for everything above ground to pass. Henry did try to deny being a slaver, but we do not believe him. John told us that his daughter saw the Baron of this place meet with some sort of dark soul like creature, captured it, drank it, and then he mutated. The large helix that can be seen in the center of the city started growing out of him. It looks like a seven-sided helix, but it is missing a side. This is also the same location where all of the lighting is striking. They also tell us that everyone inside the city is possessed by something. They all have those milky white eyes. John goes to get his wife, Rosa, in order to see if we are infected too. It turns out that Seven and Atrox are infected. Seven has Atrox damage him so that the Great Sporeling can come to the forefront. They are not infected. For some reason, it seems that being underground slows the infection, so we have some time. We then start discussing the baron and how we can get into his keep, where the likely cause of all of this is. Henry offered to sell us a map of the baron’s keep in exchange for us stealing some items from there for him. None of us wanted to help this man. Luckily, John’s daughter knew a way in, so we decided to talk to her. Before we left to do that, we bartered with Henry so that we could stay the night. We had to spend five hours in the medical ward and Seven had to help in the gardens. Atrox and Teila spoke with John’s daughter and managed to get a partial map of the baron’s keep. She also told them that in order to get in, we had to break into a head servant’s house, steal a key, and then we could enter through the servant’s quarters. She also mentioned how this all seemed to start after the Baron’s wife “tripped” down the stairs. He was also apparently muttering about how dreams are reality and that it was the only reality that he needed. We think that somehow, the Baron thinks that working with the Neverdreamed will let him get his wife back, even if it is only in a dream.

Unfortunately, we realized that our next meeting with our order contact is supposed to be tomorrow. We already missed the last one, so we need to contact him and tell him that we are not dead. We have no idea when we will actually be able to meet with our contact next. It could be a while.


	13. Vult, 5, 334

We made it into the Baron’s keep. This place is unnatural. It feels like the material realm and the realm of nightmares are slowly bleeding together. We could feel it as soon as we stepped into this place and the deeper we go, the more we transition to the realm of nightmares. We have experience here, so it is not new to us, but we are worried for our traveling companions. They will be vulnerable to many of the dangers from the realm of nightmares and we think that it would be a bad idea for any of them to sleep here. Anyways, we should get to telling of the events that transpired.

Teila managed to get the servant’s key very easily. We gave her the amulet of nondetection, she went up to the house, grabbed the key, and teleported back down. We then traversed to the Barron’s keep and entered. Not long after we entered, we ran into ghost. We managed to kill it fairly quickly. Unfortunately, the undead tend to be resistant or immune to many damage types. Atrox, Teila, and Seven are at a disadvantage here, so they will have to get creative in a fight. Eventually, we made our way into what appeared to be a servant’s dining hall, complete with bodies and food. We decided to give them a funeral in the hopes that it would dispel or weaken their ghosts. We cleared the table, placed the bodies on it, covered them in the tablecloth, arranged the food around them, and set the entire thing on fire. Right after we did this, we felt as if something was now watching us. This place is a maze, thankfully, the map that John’s daughter gave us is helping, though we do not know how much longer it will. The more we transition into the realm of dreams, the farther away from reality we are. Eventually, we came across a hall of magic buttons. We could not stop Seven from pressing them. Seven and Atrox ended up getting teleported around. It took a while for us to actually move on, as Seven kept pressing buttons, though eventually we did. We ended up finding what seemed to be some servant’s quarters. We were supposedly going to be entering this keep at the servant’s quarters, but when we opened the door, that was not where we were. This is likely due to the nature of this place. Reality is flexible here so it would be wise to not trust that things are as they seem. Teila was checking the chests that we found here for traps. The first two were clear. Atrox found a magic bird whistle in one and Seven found a magic dagger in another. The next chest that we looked at did have a trap. While we were discussing a way to safely open it, Teila went ahead and tried to disarm it without the proper tools. She ended up getting hit by poison darts. After Teila triggered the trap, we found an odd toolkit inside. It was a mix of a tailor’s kit, a surgeon’s kit, and a poisoner’s kit. Teila then opens the next chest, and promptly gets teleported. Seven and Atrox follow her by opening the chest. It seems to us that the Barron is fond of teleportation in order to confuse unwanted visitors. We decided to follow a small hallway that was connected to the room rather than teleport straight into what we assumed to be a trap. Turns out that we were right, it was a trap and the hallway did lead us to where our friends were. By the time we had arrived, Seven had disappeared, Atrox had been possessed, and Teila was fleeing for her life. We managed to save Atrox by using Turn Undead, but instead of leaving the room, Atrox approached the two remaining ghosts. He was then possessed by both of them. We tried Turn Undead again, but it did not work. Then one of the ghosts jumped from Atrox into Teila. We could no longer cast Turn Undead, so we cast Spirit guardians. Our only hope was to take down both of them so the ghosts could no longer possess them. Luckily, it seemed that out magic directly hit both the ghosts and our party members, so we were able to kill the ghosts without killing Atrox and Teila. After that, we decided to take a short rest so that we could get our charges of Turn Undead back and so that the others could recover. Our plan was to then go and find Seven, though it turns out that we did not need to. As we were preparing to set out, Seven came into the room talking about drugs and acting distinctly unlike Seven. We cast Turn Undead and a ghost popped out of Seven and flew off. He then told us what happened to him.

After he teleported, Seven tried out his new dagger on the ghosts. Turns out that it casts Light on whatever you stab with it. He knew that he could not win the fight, so he decided to press one of the gilded buttons on the wall that the ghosts seemed to want to keep them away from. He ended up being teleported to another part of the keep. Seven met the ghost of a butler, who told him to go to the third floor and to kill him. Seven obliged and ended the butler. Seven then runs into two ghost scholar’s who are debating about whether or not the world can exist without magic. They ask Seven to break the tie, which he tries to. In the end, the mage scholar ends up killing the other scholar. He then continued down the hall. This is where he was possessed by a dug dealer ghost.

Seven the proceeded to press another button on the wall. This teleported him into a room with a chest. Inside the chest was silver and gold gilded plate armor. Before we could warn Atrox about it possibly being cursed, he put it on. We shall see what consequences this has. Seven then leads us to a library. Near the entrance, we found a chest that contains some sort of magical divination ink and a quill that was paired with it. The library was full of scholar ghosts who are studying. We look though the books and we are surprised to see that the shelf we were looking at were books about our ~~life~~ lives…. When we read through it, we read *both* of our memories. The memories of both Lanari and myself. It was quite the experience. Anyways, everyone had a shelf there and we all spent time reading through our own. Atrox had a shelf full of the memories that he lost to the Neverdreamed, but he could not retain any of that information. After we left the library, we found the way up the second floor where we have stopped for a bit. We shall be continuing on shorty. We will probably elaborate more on what we found in that library later, but we do not have much time now.

We had an interesting interaction with Seven just now. Something was bothering him, so we asked him was wrong. He then told me that the reason he remembered for his family sacrificing him was wrong. It seems that they actually sacrificed him because they were afraid of him. He than asked us if we found both of ourselves in the library, which we had. Seven is now concerned about the fact that he did not find the Great Sporeling’s memories in the library. Though we suppose that calling them memories are a but misleading, they are not true memories, they are a window to our subconscious. We told them there are multiple reasons why the Great Sporeling’s memories were not there. It could be because they are a magical fungus while we are mortal humanoids. It could be that the Great Sporeling does not have a subconscious, or because they are a hive mind. It could be something else entirely or a combination of this listed above. We then asked him if he would like us to do more research into the Great Sporeling and he said yes. We now have another thing on our to-do list now. As soon as we get somewhere with a decent library, we shall start our research. Though for now, we must finish our journey through this place.


	14. Vult, 20, 334

We made it through the Barron’s keep, mostly in one piece, though not all of us alive. After our short rest at the start of floor two, we began to make our plan of how to go through here. The map that John’s daughter gave us said that the exit was on the other side of the wall from where we entered. Seven decided to try and burrow our way through using magic ice and acid. He managed to get through, but there was something on the other side waiting for us. Seven told us that it sounded like his mother. Teila then sent Jinx into the hole to see what is on the other side. Almost immediately we could here their screams of pain. Seven enlarged the hole enough so that we could look through. To us, the creature looked like an amalgamation of insect parts, but we knew almost immediately what it was. It was a nightmare spirit. We exited the hole and told the others. Teila then used Mage Hand to retrieve Jinx, unfortunately, they were stuck in a nightmare. We did various thing to comfort them, such as petting them and giving them treats. Atrox also played some bird sounds on his whistle. Eventually we were able to get Jinx out of their nightmare. Now we just had to get through the nightmare spirit.

Atrox went through the hole first. The key to dealing with nightmare spirits is quite literally through positivity. They feed off of negative emotions, so if you can keep yourself feeling calm or some other positive emotion there is not much that they can do to you. Atrox played soothing bird music on his whistle as we walked past it to the exit. Seven crawled through the hole next. He cast Faerie Fire on the image of his mother in order to make her look pretty. It worked well enough and he made it to the other side. Then it was our turn through. We have encountered nightmare spirits before and we know how to handle them, so we had no issues. Unfortunately for Teila, they are intelligent. Since it knew that it could not do much to us and the others had already passed, it went after her. It phased through the wall, grappled Teila, and took the form of Seven with a slit throat. Teila managed to escape on her own and Misty Stepped through the hole in the wall and away from the creature. Then we all ventured up to the third floor.

As soon as we entered, we could tell that we were now almost entirely in the realm of nightmares, though we could also feel influences from the realm of dreams. We also noticed that everyone else’s appearances were slightly different. Seven appeared shorter and scrawnier. Atrox was a few inches taller, and Teila looked physically weaker. We told the others about our surroundings and Atrox attempted to will a ladder into existence. It worked. Teila then tried to will some powdered iron and silver into existence in case we ran into more ghosts, but it did not turn out well. Instead of creating the powdered metals, she created a pile of some sort of toxic metal shards. Since we are in the realm of nightmares, it will influence what we try to create and try to twist it.

Dreams are unpredictable and logic rarely applies, so we decide to tie ourselves to each other like mountain climber do in order to try and prevent the walls from shifting around us and cutting us off from each other. It seemed to work, though it is also possible that such an event was not going to occur. We had no sort of map for this floor, and even if we did, we do not think it would have helped at all, so we decided to wander the maze. We concluded that there was little point in trying to mark our path or use any of the other typical maze solving methods as it was not unlikely that the maze would shift around us. As we wandered, we saw some ghosts around, but they did not acknowledge our presence. They seemed broken. We entered this one room that had the ghost of a servant woman who was surrounded by whisps whispering in her ear. As we watched, it seemed like they were making her haggard. Atrox played some more bird music on his whistle and chased them away. She seemed to recover shortly afterwards. We them came across some servants’ quarters that seemed strangely static. Teila investigated the rooms and found four magic buttons. Two of them would transport us away, one had some sort of evocation magic on it, and the last would teleport us a very short distance. Seven and Atrox almost immediately pushed the one that would teleport us a short distance away. The rope that was connecting us was severed when they teleported. Teila and ourselves followed shortly.

We found ourselves in a hallway that looked like they were from the original keep. There were two doors on either side of us, and the hallway continued down. We could tell that we were not a lot closer to the material plane than before. We opened the door on the left and in it we found what appeared to have been the master bedroom. In the bed was the body of who we assume the Baroness. She was covered in blood. On the side of the room, there was another body. It was an aasimar. His body was pinned to the wall with a greatsword with a poisoned dagger at his feet. This was likely the assassin who had killed the Baroness and he seemed to belong to our old friends, the Order of the Radiant Dragons. They seem to be causing a lot of trouble these days.

We then opened the door on the right. This room was a child’s room. There were toys scattered about the floor and two beds in the room. In those beds were two children, one young boy and older one girl. We approached and examined them. Thankfully, they were only magically asleep. We proceeded to cast Dispel Magic on them. They were not exactly calm when they woke up, but that is understandable as they woke to four heavily armed strangers in their bedrooms. We pulled the girl aside and told her what was going on. Looking back, we see that her reaction was not how you would react to a young girl being told that her mother is dead and her father possessed. If we had noticed that, maybe things would have ended differently. She did not seem to weep for her mother, she instead seemed to respond with anger, and declared that she was sure that her father had killed the assassin. She then questioned us as to how to best safely get out of here. We decided that they should stay there. We hoped that if this place collapses once we defeat the Baron that they would simply be returned to the material plane. We then left their room. Teila tried to go down the hallway, but she was simply teleported back to the other end. We then left by pressing a button that was near the doors.

At this point, we think that we know why this is all happening. The Order of the Radiant Dragons sent an assassin after the Baron and the Baroness for some reason. The assassin succeeded in killing the Baroness, but the Baron killed him before he could finish the job. The Baron was blinded by grief and tried to find a way to bring his wife back. The Neverdreamed took advantage of him and likely promised to let the Baron live in a “dream” with his wife and kids.

We ended up in a different part of the maze and kept wandering. Eventually we came across a set of very fancy doors. Teila investigated them and found two buttons, one extremally fancy one that did not seems to be attached to anything and one extremely tarnished one that looked like it would turn to dust if pushed. We decided to push the tarnished button. When Teila did so, the door and the button turned to ash. Inside the room was three suits of armor and a button on the other end of the room that we could barely pick out. Seven entered the room and attacked one of the suits of armor. They then retaliated and attacked Seven. He was severely injured. We attacked the one that Seven had injured with one of our cantrips, Toll the Dead. Teila, standing as far back as she could, hit the suits of armor with her fiery magics, Scorching Ray and Fire Bolt. Atrox tried to hit one with his greatsword, but he missed. Seven then rips one of the armors to shreds with magical acidic claws. One of the suits of armor then came up to us and attacked. Once they hit us, a very strange thing happened. We were no longer in our own body, but in Sevens! It was odd being so short and having a tail, not to mention all of the spores. Teila then cast Scoring ray above our… Seven’s? head in order to hit the enemies and Atrox managed to cleave a second one is half. Then the last suit of armor manages to reach Teila and hit her. Seven and Teila ended up switching bodies. At this point, Teila was in our body, Seven was in Teila’s, and we were in Seven’s. At this point, we had recovered our wits and cast Toll the Dead on the last suit of armor and managed to kill it. At this point, we were at a loss as to what to do. Three of us were in the wrong bodies and we had no idea how to fix it. Atrox then noticed the button on the wall again, though none of the rest of us could see it anymore. He went over and pushed it. Atrox then teleported away.

He wound up in an extremely large room filled with beds and very bed had a body in it. He wandered around a bit and eventually found _our_ bodies. All four of us. He could interact with all of the bodies except his own. He attempted to shake Teila, but nothing happened. He then dropped a chainmail shirt on Seven, which he felt. He then used a cantrip to make all of us cold. When we felt that, we realized that we were dreaming. So we willed ourselves to wake up, and we did. We were very relieved to be in our own body again. We also noticed that we felt as if we had just had a fill night’s sleep. Seven also realized that we were dreaming. He cast Primal Savagery and clawed … his?... Teila’s?... the body that he was currently occupying’s chest open. He then proceeded to wake up and also felt rested. Teila was the only one left stuck in that dream. It seems that she did not realize it. That must have been very traumatizing for her, watching her body rip itself open. We tried to go back to retrieve Teila, so we went over to the button that Atrox was next to when he entered and pushed it. Unfortunately, we ended up in another part of the maze. We then decided to cast Sending to tell Teila that she was asleep and that she needed to wake up. Apparently, she tried hitting herself with the flat part of a sword, but it did not work. Seven then woke up Atrox by splashing water on him and they both worked together to wake up Teila by repeatedly burning and freezing her. Then they came and found us. We were discussing what just happened and thing that can help one wake up from a dream. Pain can be very useful for that. During that conversation, a rather humorous moment occurred when Seven told Teila that “you watched me rip your chest open”.

At this point, we retied the rope attaching us all together and began wandering again. We then stumbled upon a room with eight podiums of different colors. They each had a book on them with a series of numbers and letters. At the entrance to the room was a riddle. The words of the riddle had odd capitalization, and when we looked and the capital letters, they spelled out RED and GRAY, so we took those two books. They corresponded to a second room that had the other half of the puzzle. The room contained floor covered in pressure plates. We surmised that the books gave us the path. There was a second riddle whose answer was the number of gods, 7. According to the riddle, our gods fled to this world. Seven then decided to attempt the path. He successfully made it and once he did, the rest of the pressure plates depressed except for the correct path. That made it easy for the rest of us to cross. Once we got there, there were four chests. Each one was labeled as containing one of our dream. The first riddle told us that we could not open our own chest, so we each opened another’s. The dreams that were inside are not important, but each person received and item that seemed to be related to what their dream was. Teila received a small hourglass that could stop time for a minute. Seven received an odd potion that had some sort of tranformation component. Atrox received some sort of magical leather wraps that caused another symbol on his artifact to glow. We received a pouch of purple dragon scales. We knew what these were as soon as we saw them, thanks to us reading Lanari’s memories. These were scales from the current dream dragon.

This seems a good enough place as any to write down what I learned about her. It seems that she was one of the few kalashatar that preferred to spend her time in the realm of dreams rather than on the material plane. There, she made a number of strange allies and grew up with a purple dream dragon. They were great friends. Now, the realm of dream and the realm of nightmares are constantly at odds with each other. A powerful nightmare spirit kidnapped someone close to Lanari and the dragon. They went on an excursion into the realm of nightmares in order to rescue them. Unfortunately, Lanari died during it and the dragon was captured and turned into a creature of nightmare.

After we all received our items, a door appeared on the wall to our left. It opened to a spiral hallway that winding towards the center. In that hallway, we noticed a hidden room. When we entered it, we found another dead body. Seven recognized this one as the butler who’s ghost he encountered earlier. Written on the wall in his blood were the words “This is a realm of nightmares. They are a lie.” Seven created some flowers and arranged them around the body. We then proceeded to give him a funeral by burning it.

When we reached the center of the spiral, we found room that had three locked gates and a pedestal in the center with a scroll and a key. The scroll said to choose the gate wisely, or else they could not help us. The gates were labeled as the Realm of Truth, the Realm of Kindness, and the Ream of Horror. We immediately decided to open the Ream of Horror. As we approached that gate, we heard tortured screaming. Teila inserted the key and opened the door. Spiraling mist coalesced inside it and out of that mist came a whisp like creature. The whisp was a greater dream guardian and it wished to help us, for a price. Dream guardians are typically benevolent, so we decided to cautiously trust this one. Their names are also typically emotions, not words. This one’s name translates to something like joy-schadenfreude-crying-at-a-bad-thing-but-feeling-good. We call them Schaden for short. Schaden then proceeded to banish a greater nightmare that was following us. They also offered to give us protection against other nightmare creatures and to tell us more about the purple scales that we received. In exchange, they wanted us to take some of the helixes on the roof, turn them the other way, and distribute them in populated areas. They said that this would cause good dream within their influence to go to his domain. We agreed, as we do not know enough about the politics of the realm of dream to know if there is something in this deal that we should be wary of. Schaden also let us each keep one item from this world. We kept a book filled with some of Lanari’s memories. Teila and Atrox also elected to keep books. Seven conjured a superior healing potion to keep. Schaden then conjured a path of light that would lead us safely to the Baron. We also asked them what would happen to a creature from the material plane that was in a dream and the dream ended. They said that they would likely be deposited back into the material plane near where they entered the dream from. We determined that the Baron’s children would likely be fine.

We decided to take a quick rest before continuing on. During this rest, it Seven drank the potion that he had acquired earlier. We don’t know exactly what it did, but just before we were about to set off again the Great Sporeling came to the forefront and told us that they had achieved their goal and that it was time for them to leave. They gave us an apple and told us that if we needed help to plant it. Then they left. There was nothing for us to do but wish them well. Maybe one day we will cross paths again.

Schaden’s path lead us to a long hallway filled with red mist. The hallway sloped up, but it felt like we were descending because the air was getting heavier. There were runes all along the walls. Some of them seemed active, while others were not. Teila inspected them and determined that they were inactive Glyphs of Warding that contained 9th and 10th level spells. We were warry of these, but there was no other path than forward, and since we were in the realm of nightmares, there was a good chance that they were not real, so we continued forward. None of them triggered. Eventually, we came to a door that had thirteen sapphires imbedded in it. Three of the gems were glowing, the door had no handle, and written in blood was the message “wake not the litch”. Teila tried to push open the door, but there was something stopping her from touching it. We all then felt something go through our minds. Then the sapphires glowed brightly and fell out of the door, which was now open. Atrox picked up the gems and we entered the room. Through the door was a dark, unlit room with a sarcophagus in the center wrapped in and suspended by chains. The sarcophagus was surrounded by runs that seemed to be filled with powerful holy magic. To the left of the sarcophagus was a book bound with bone and to the right was a sword and a gilded shield. All of the objects pulses with light that seemed directed towards the sarcophagus. It seemed safe to assume that this was the litch that the warning on the door spoke of and since the warning told us not to wake them, waking them was exactly what we did. Teila used Mage Hand in order to pull the book out of the circle. When she did, the pulsing from the book stopped. She then cast Unseen Servant and had them bring the sword and the shield out of the circle. As the final item left the circle, it sarcophagus opened.

A small gnome with pure white hair fell out of it, unconscious. We could see a keyhole in the back of the sarcophagus and a key around the gnome’s neck. Teila decided to open the book to see what it contained. The pages were bone dry and there were two pictures in the front. One was of a male mage dressed in fine robes and the other was of some furry white creature that seemed to be on patrol in a snowy region. The lighting of these photos was odd. It did not seem to come from a torch, fire, or some other magical light source. We then decided that removing the chains from the sarcophagus was a good next step. As we went to move them, they fell away all on their own and at that moment the gnome woke up.

The gnome introduced themselves as Kaldrene Desmorts. She is an undead paladin who had no idea how she got there or even where she was. All that she knew was that she needed go to a point that was some distance away and that her fiancé, the mage in the photo, had locked her in there for some reason. She decided to come with us to face the Baron and used the key she had to open the way out. It lead us onto the roof the building. The shape of the roof, which was a hexagon, did not match the shape of the floors below, but seeing as the rules of reality do not necessarily apply here, it was not unusual. There were six spiraling pillars of light that were arranged in the shape of a hexagon, with one in the middle acting as a support and another empty spot for another pillar. Each beam seemed to correlate with one of the dead gods, with the central one being Yna. The sky was also cloudy and full of red lightning. We could see the Baron was next to the empty spot in the hexagon and in that spot was a statue of Krezak. As soon as we stepped out onto the roof, an enormously strong wind knocked ourselves, Teila, and Kaldrene down. Atrox was the only one strong enough to stand his ground. The Baron turned around and we could see that his eyes were black spirals. He was not immediately hostile and tried to bribe us with gold to go away. He told us that he was just trying to get back what the Order of the Radiant Dawn took from him. Teila cast Enlarge on Atrox in order to give him a better advantage in the battle.

During this conversation, Kaldrene took the opportunity to walk closer to the Baron. As soon as she reached him, she attacked. Atrox then cast Fire Bolt at the Baron, as he was not yet close enough to attack. We cast Moonbeam on him and Teila attacked with her favorite offensive spell, Scorching Ray. Then a bolt of lightning came out of one of the pillars and stuck Teila. We found out that they would periodically strike one of us, favoring to attack those that were prone. The one that struck Teila ended up deaging her by 12 years, so she now had the body of a 10 year old. The Baron then picked up Kaldrene and tossed her into a radiant yellow beam of light, the one that correlated to Volite. This was probably the worst beam for her to end up, since Volite is the god of light and Kaldrene is undead. She took a lot of radiant damage and traveled along the beam of light, fell into another beam that correlated to Lamis, took some more damage and a reduction to her strength, traveled along that beam, fell out into yet another beam which correlated to Pritais, where she took more damage, went unconscious, then was brought back as a wright. Teila then, as a ten year old, cast Scorching Ray at the Baron. Kaldrene was then hit by the next bolt of lightning. It took her shield and gave her a temporary shield. She was then almost immediately picked up by the Baron and shoved back into Volite’s light beam. After she fell out of it, she was unconscious. We made our way over to her as quickly as we could and somewhat healed her. Teila cast Magic Missile at the Baron and “killed” him.

Instead of dying, helixes spouted from him. At this point, large shards formed at the base of each light beam and since she was still laying on the ground, Kaldrene was hit by yet another lightning bolt taking even more damage, going unconscious again. The Baron then used the helixes that had sprouted on his body to grapple Atrox. He also seemed to absorb power from one of the beams of light. Atrox retaliated by ripping one of the helixes off of the Baron, inverting it, and shoving it back in him. This caused massive damage to him. We then cast Hold Person on the Baron to paralyze him. Unfortunately for Teila, the wind managed to shove her into a light beam and took some damage from it. Since she was there, Teila tried to grab the shard, which was one of Frini’s, and succeeded. Once she did, that light beam went out. She then cast Resilient Sphere on herself, which we like to call the Hamster ball, in order to protect herself from any more effects. She made a good call in doing so, as right after a bolt of lighting tried to hit her, but it could not get through the hamster ball. Kaldrene informed us later that at this point she was pulled into what we believe to be a deep nightmare realm. There, she was on a cliff overlooking a city. From her vantage point, she could also see a being that she could not describe, as it hurt her mind to even look at it. The only thing that she could tell was that it had ninety-two mouths. Around this creature, who we presume to be the Neverdreamed, was a hoard of nightmare spirits. Back in the battle, Atrox took advantage of the Baron being paralyzed and grabbed a helix off of the ground, reversed it, and shoved it into the Baron’s heart, “killing” him. At this point, Kaldrene over in the deep nightmare saw the presumed Neverdreamed open a portal and direct one of the nightmare spirits through it.

On our layer of the plane, we saw this creature emerge from the body of the Baron. It seemed to be made completely out of helixes and the moment it entered, the wind that was causing us difficulty moving about died. Kaldrene noticed a series of ledges on the cliff face that she could use to reach the portal and begins making her way towards it. Back on our layer, we cast Bestow Curse on the creature, but unfortunately it did not work. Teila ended up dropping the hamster ball and attempted to draw power from the shard, which worked a bit too well. Ink from the shard stated to enter her and Teila accidently started consuming the shard. After this, she was hit by a bolt of lightning that was very similar to the first one that she was hit with. It ended up deaging her to about one year old, which made spell casting quite difficult for her. Then Kaldrene, or at least her spirit, ended up popping out of one of the helixes on the nightmare spirit. Her body was still laying on the ground, but her spirit started attacking the creature. Atrox joined in her attack. We then attempted to curse the nightmare spirit again, and this time it worked, making it easier for spells that attacked his will to take effect. After this, Teila cast a 4th level Scorching Ray at the nightmare spirit. Have you ever seen a furious baby cast such a devastating spell? We doubt it, but we can assure you that it is a terrifying sight. Kaldrene then started to make her way over to the shard of Pritais, thinking that it could help her. We then walked up to the nightmare spirit and Balanced with it. It was quite the experience, though a better one than when we tried it with that tree. We became connected to some sort of hive mind that the nightmare spirits had. We heard them talking about going after Lania, the queen of the United Provinces, by corrupting her consort and using them to get to her. Teila then hexed the spirit, causing their physical strength to diminish, and began trying to crawl away from the ink that was pouring out of the shard. Nearby, Kaldrene ate the shard of Pritais. As a result of this, her body turned to ash. It seems that she is now stuck as a spirit. We decided to follow Teila’s example and grabbed Yna’s shard. We also tried to draw on its power and once we started, we could not bring ourselves to stop. We ended up consuming the entire shard. Usually, we have such tight control of ourselves, but this time we could not resist the call of our goddess’s power. Luckily for us, there do not seem to have been any negative effects, though the same cannot be said for Kaldrene. We found out later that she was now a godless. The ink from Teila’s shard kept trying to reach her and she kept trying to crawl away from it. While she was crawling, she also sent another Scoring Ray at the nightmare spirit. The nightmare spirit then proceeded to kill Atrox. Luckily for him, the leather straps that he received earlier activated and temporarily saved him. It gave him just enough time to kill the nightmare spirit and for us to save him.

As soon as the nightmare spirit was dead, the others started to fade from the realm and went back to the material plane. Since we had Balanced with the nightmare spirit, we could not go with them yet. We gathered up the rest of the shards and waited for the effects of the Balance to wear off. Once they did, we ended up back in the material realm too. It seems that while we were stuck, some disturbing events occurred. The Baron was there when they returned. He was alive and seemed fine. His children came through the door to the roof. His daughter ran up to him in order to hug him. Her arms then turned into scythes and she cut him into three pieces. She then turned in order to kill her brother, but the others intervened. The girl then jumped off the roof, sprouted wings, and flew off. We believe that she has been possessed by a nightmare spirit. It is so thoroughly integrated into her, we do not know if it could be possible to save her.

In the time before we returned to the material plane, John and Henry had mad their way up to the roof. Henry wanted to take half of the coffers and leave town with his people, but Teila, who was currently rapidly going through puberty as she returned to her true age, charmed him into only taking a fourth. They told us that we had been gone for two weeks. It was only two days for us. The Baron’s son is now the regent of this place, with Henry to help him out. John then gave us a reward of 10,000 gold pieces, which we split amongst ourselves and a mutual party fund. At this point, it was time for us to leave the city, though Kaldrene wanted to do one thing before we left.

We made our way over to the local temple of Krezak, where she preceded to assault it. It seems that she wanted to talk to Krezak, but he did not want to speak to her, so much so that she was thrown out of the temple multiple times. She kept going back in until the doors closed in her face and locked her out. She then decided to enter the temple by breaking a window. After she did this, it seems that she successfully annoyed Krezak into talking to her and he told her that they would speak somewhere else. The other possibility is that Kaldrene is just insane and that she didn’t actually speak to him, but despite what Teila thinks, we believe Kaldrene. After this, we left the city.

We must confess that as we have been writing this, we have overheard a conversation between Lisath and Kaldrene. We did not mean to, but they were not exactly quiet. It seems that Kaldrene is not from this world, but another. Some continent on another world called Aren. Her world also has a sun. We wonder what it is like, to live in a place so full of light. It must be nice. It seems that Kaldrene’s fiancé, whose name is Relium, is her world’s most powerful necromancer and she thinks that he is the one that locked her in that tomb. She doesn’t know why, just that that morning he was in a panic for some reason and that he would not tell her what is wrong. Lisath also told her more about the shards and how we all rely on them in order to live. Kaldrene was flabbergasted that we relied on them and that we did not try to adapt to the world as it is. Over the past few thousand years, many have tried. All, except those that managed to sustain themselves with magic, died. Kaldrene seems determined to figure out a way for us to not have to depend on the shards in order to survive. Perhaps she can find a way where others have failed, perhaps not. We shall simply have to see what she comes up with. A world where we are not dependent upon the shards to live would be nice. During this conversation, Kaldrene also mentioned that she was a princess of a place called Saldrix, though it seems a new royal is on the throne, someone named Feu. This is because her entire line is now comprised of only undead, herself and her brother, so they cannot rule. Before she ended up here, Kaldrene was working with her fiancé and her brother, Kelsyr, to try and save various world from destruction. Apparently, there is a group of very powerful creatures that trying to get their hands on the Seeds of Creation in order to increase their own power. It seems that there are four seeds, Chaos, Evil, Law, and Goodness. If these people get their hands on these Seeds, then many worlds could be destroyed.


	15. Date: Vult, 27, 334

We haven’t had much time to record our journey this past week due to near constant attacks by godless. We barely have had the time to sleep. They are all pulled here by the greater shards we are carrying. Speaking of them, Kaldrene has eaten our Shard of Volite. She asked us all beforehand if she could, and we agreed. We don’t have much use for them, other then possibly selling them, which would have its own challenges. For now, we are just going to hang onto them until we can figure out what to do with them. We also heard some troubling news. It seems that the Shardeater is moving towards us. According to the rumors, he could be here anytime between two days and two months. We needed to figure out how to either hide the shards, protect ourselves from the Shardeater, or store them somewhere. Teila asked around and determined that even if they are possible, there is no way for us to gain access to mobile wards that could protects us. The mechanics of the wards are a closely guarded secret. We decided to see of the Order of the Runic Hammer could help us with our problem.

Part of the Order functions as a bank, where one can have a monetary account or a vault. There are two types of vaults, one that is interdimensional and one that is not. We decided to open an interdimensional vault in order to store the shards. It costs one thousand gold a month. We only plan on having it for a month as that should be plenty of time for us to reach the capital. Atrox decided to set up a personal account as well. For that, there was a one thousand gold opening fee. Now he can store his money there, he can also access it via a magic coin that he was given, that coin will also allow him to get out of a near certain death experience by swallowing it and being teleported away at the cost of everything he owns, and some magic enchantments that will take his valuables off of him upon his death and the Order will ensure that a person of his choice will get everything he owns. In order to determine who would be his beneficiary upon his death, they took a drop of his blood in order to look for blood relatives. Surprisingly, they found three matches. When the results first came in, there was no data associated with the matches, so the clerk went to go check the records. We were not expecting him to find anything due to the effect that the Neverdreamed has on their victims, but he did and came back with three names on a list: Nilara Highwind, Atrox Finlar, and Vidian Highwind. Apparently, the clerk can confirm that all of the people are alive. Though, when the clerk learned that Atrox did not know these people and that he had amnesia, he quickly took the list back and told us that he should not have told us anything. It is not much, but it is more information than we had previously on Atrox’s past. If we can track them down, maybe we can learn more.

We decided to stay in town for a few days in order to recover from the week of near constant battle. Kaldrene decided to go bother Krezak again in one of his temples. This time, she can see somewhat in the temple due to her eating the light shard. Apparently there was someone in there, but after she left to go get cookies, they had disappeared. Over the next few days, she kept showing up with her cookies in order to try and get a response. Eventually, someone did show up. It was one of Krezak’s celestials. She began giving them cookies, but they said that they could not eat them. She responded by giving them even more cookies. The celestial told her that Krezak was kidnapped by his own high priest. He is now trapped and somehow being used as some sort of fuel source for some drow? We are not sure that we completely understand what that is all about, but regardless he needs to be rescued.

While Kaldrene was busy with that, ourselves and Teila went to a local wizard in order to do some research. Teila wanted to know more about the macro-scrolls and we wanted to see if the wizard knew anything about the realm of dreams. He let Teila into his library for a copy of her notes on the macro-scroll that we *acquired* previously. She plans on spending the rest of her time here researching. The wizard also knew quite a bit about the realm of dreams. We traded one of our dream dragon scales for the information, which the wizard said that he can use in order to make things from the realm of dreams real. It seems that there have been five dream dragons, one after the other. The dragon who our scales come from is the current one. The dragons are special because they can break the rules of the realm, which can give a powerful advantage to whichever side has one. It also seems that we, as kalashatar, can also break some of the rules of those realms. Typically, the two sides must maintain a balance, one cannot do something unless the other does as well. Such as what happened in the Town of Tevil. Shaden was able to come and aid us there because the creatures of the nightmare realm where there. He told us that we could also manipulate the realm of dreams, though we would have to be taught how. When we inquired about return the dragon from a nightmare dragon back into a dream dragon, he said that we would need to ask a greater dream guardian on how to do that and likely would have to help them in return, though we would have to be careful about doing things that empower a dream guardian too much as once they gain enough power to ascend, they become a pillar of reality. We did not want to ask Schaden for help, as we were already doing things that are empowering him with the helixes, so we made another trade with the wizard. We traded him Shaden’s name for the name of another greater guardian, Overpower-Protect-Triumph is how their name can best be translated. We plan on spending the rest of our time researching the realm of dreams and experimenting with dreams. Teila has agreed to let us use her dreams.


	16. Vult, 28, 334

We found in our experiments with dreams that we can make them obey reality. Once we leave town, we plan on contacting Overpower and speaking with them. Hopefully they will help us.


	17. Zarantyr 2, 335

So far, the journey has returned to its normal level of godless activity. We spoke with Overpower last night. Kaldrene let us use her dreams for this. Unfortunately, we cannot use the dreams of those within our magical shelter, but since Kaldrene is a godless, she can be outside without issue. Overpower was not what we expected. We can best describe him as a dumb jock with a heart of gold. He is obsessed with strength and is not very smart, but he is good and want to help protect people. His go-to solution to problems is to punch them and while that won’t really work for our problem, he did agree to help us get stronger so that we can eventually save the dream dragon. During our negotiation, he produced a contract for us to sign, but it turns out he didn’t write it. Schaden did. Overpower is illiterate. Essentially, in exchange for him helping us, we agreed to help him spread his message of bettering one’s self. He gave us business cards and everything.


	18. Zarantyr 13, 335

We made it to the capital, but not without difficulty. We came very close to disaster, but Kaldrene’s sacrifice saved us. We were close to the city gates, when we came across a creature in the middle of the road. It was a godless creature that was some sort of mix between a giraffe and a hydra. It had a very long neck that split off into multiple heads. It was acting as some sort of beacon for other godless, and there were a lot of godless around. Then we heard the thumping behind us. It was the Shardeater and he was running straight towards us. We only had one choice; we ran. Lisath grabbed a barrel of javelins out of the cart, got onto the roof, and killed the giraffe. She then proceeded to attack other godless in our way. Kaldrene took control of the cart and used her summoned steed to guide the ravager. The rest of us were on guard to take out any godless who got too close. Unfortunately, the Shardeater was faster than us and was gaining. It was going to be close if we made it into the city. Some godless elk came up to the cart, but we were able to dispatch them before they could do anything. We also granted Teila extended darkvision so that she could see farther. Afte r the elk, a group of godless wolves came close. Telia used one of the spell scrolls, Arcane Gate, to teleport us 300 feet further along the road. We left the wolves behind, but the Shardeater was sill closing, We tried so slow him down by even a little bit by casing Flame Strike on him. We though that the bright light and fire would make him pause for even a few seconds, but it only backfired on us. Instead of hitting him, the spell it traveled through him and hit everything within a mile, except for those godless that he cared about sparing from it. This is when Kaldrene jumped off of the cart in order to try and stall him. He then roared at us. It was a roar that shook one to their bones. Ourselves and Teila could not withstand it and we were promptly knocked unconscious. Kaldrene cast Command at the Shardeater ordering him to grovel, and it surprisingly worked. Everyone within a mile was also affected, but it bought us enough time to reach the city gates. We wonder how many people within the city suddenly stopped what they were doing and groveled. We made it into the city, but the Shardeater had Kaldrene. He also declared that this city was now under siege. The guards immediately wanted to bring us to the queen, but we were trying to see if we could help Kaldrene, in the end we could not, but she managed to talk her way out of the situation. She lied her ass off and convicted the Shardeater that she would help him get into the city. Somehow it worked and she walked right through the hoard of godless and into the city. We are now about the meet with the queen.


	19. Date: Zarantyr 14, 335

Today has been a rather traumatizing day. We are lucky to even be here to write down our account of what happened. Things started going downhill about five minutes after we walked through the palace doors. We were warned by a guard not to interact with any of the nobles inside the place, lest they perceive some slight and demand that we are given into their custody. Surprisingly, we made it through the entrance hall without issue. Then we entered the throne room. That is when things started to go wrong for us.

The queen immediately told that we were under arrest because her consort, who happens to be a very powerful divination wizard, told her that we were a threat to her kingdom. We tried to convince her that we were here to help, not harm. She wanted proof of our intentions, so Atrox decided to offer her our dream helixes. For some reason that she could not share with us at that time, Kaldrene then wanted to approach the queen’s consort. She was immediately accused by the queen of trying to kill the consort, Zorrias. Kaldrene was then dragged off by the guards and given to one of the queen’s sisters, Lita. The rest of us were taken to the queen’s other sister, Nali.

Atrox, Teila, and ourselves were taken to some rather nice cells. There was a real bed in each and clean straw on the floor. Nali shortly arrived and began to ask us questions. The first thing that she asked was if she could have our names. This specific phrasing of the question immediately set off alarm bells for us. There are many creatures that can use one’s name to hold power of you. We responded cautiously and it seemed to amuse her. It does not seem that Nali deals in names, but she does deal in information. She led the three of us into a nicer room, where we discussed terms. Though it was less of a discussion and more of a “here is what is going to happen”. We ended up signing a contract with her that said that she would only divulge the information that she thought was relevant to her sister. It was better than nothing and we were not going to be able to leave without telling her, so we told her everything, except about the Dream Dragon. After we told her everything, she wanted us to get proof of the consort’s treachery, so she gave us disguises that would hide us from the consort’s divination. This consisted of polymorphing us into other races. Nali then told us that dealing with the kidnapped god problem was probably a good way to achieve our other goal of finding proof of the consort’s deception. We became a spring eladrin, Atrox became a tortle, and Teila became a duragar. She was extremely unhappy about this because she lost a few important natural abilities. She then sent us on our way and said that she would look for Kaldrene and set her free.

Kaldrene was having a much worse time than we were. She was dragged deep into the dungeon and tied to a chair in a cell filled with magical darkness. There were whispers in the darkness that tried to drive her mad, but she simply meditated and waited until something else happened. Eventually, Lita arrived. She taunted Kaldrene with the fact that she had her phylactery. At first, Kaldrene did not believe her. She didn’t even have a clue as to where it was and her fiancé, the extremely powerful necromancer, was supposed to have been protecting it. Kaldrene assumed that Lita had just been going through her head or had read her journal. Then Lita killed her. Stabbed her right in the neck, which one would think that since Kaldrene had no physical body it would not be that devastating of a blow, but it did kill her. Kaldrene then reformed right in the same room that she died in. That convinced her that it was real. Lita then said that she would let Kaldrene go if she could make “friends” with a nightmare spirit. When Kaldrene used her divine sense to see if the thing that Lita had just pulled out was a nightmare spirit, she found out that Lita is an amalgamation of every type of creature from every plane except for undead or godless.

Kaldrene was untied and left in the cell with the nightmare. She promptly terrified the creature and it fled. Unfortunately, the nightmare soon came back disguised as a guard. Once it opened the door, she phased through it and started running. The nightmare caught up with her and almost killed her again, but she Commanded it to flee. This bought her enough time to get to the top floor and run into Nali, who had just left us. Nali then enchanted Kaldrene, turning her into a wood elf, though she still did not have a body. We are not entirely sure how that worked, but it did. Kaldrene then found us right outside of the jail, where she informed us of what had happened to her and as to why she wanted to approach the consort in the first place. It turns out that he is likely possessed by a nightmare spirit. We then headed to a tavern to rest, as we still needed to recover from the encounter with the Shardeater. Before we headed to the temple, Kaldrene donned Atrox’s armor, since as a tortle he could not wear it and Kaldrene’s armor did not fit her anymore. For some reason, the plate armor turned into mithril. We have no idea how or why as no one cast any magic on it, but sometimes it is better not to question things.

When we reached the temple, we found a long line leading out of it. Luckily for us, instead of waiting for two hours to get in, Teila just charmed the doorman to let us in. It is very convenient to have a wizard that is good at charming people. It opens so many doors. Once we met with an acolyte, we thought that it would be a good idea to buy some powdered iron and silver from them, just in case we ran into more undead or other such creatures. Teila then pulled out that winter unseelie plant that she got a while ago and showed it to the acolyte, who then proceeded to feed it some of their blood. Kaldrene then asked to meet with the high priest. The acolyte led us to a doorway with a ball of darkness in it. He directed us to step into it, and like fools, we did so.

We were transported into a room made out of darkness. The floor was covered in blood and bones. In the center was a large three-headed dog. The first thing that we did was cast Daylight into the room. Creatures of shadow tend to rely on them for tactics, so we removed the shadows. The first thing that Kaldrene did was up to the dog and pet them. Teila and ourselves were attacking dog, while Kaldrene refused to do so and kept petting them. Eventually, she won over one of the heads, another became somewhat sympathetic, and the central head still wanted to kill Kaldrene. Atrox climbed in the dogs back, then the dog breathed magical darkness at its feet, creating shadows, and teleported away with both Kaldrene and Atrox.

Teila and ourselves were stuck in that room and we had no idea how to get to the others. Teila eventually found a hidden lever that opened up part of the wall, revealing the dog, our two companions and various piles of loot that had been taken from people that the dog had killed in the past. Kaldrene had used all of her healing on the dog, who had fallen unconscious. She even found a scroll of regeneration in the room and cast it on the dog. As the healing magic did its job, the dog seemed to become more and more emancipated, so we began to shove food down its throat. Eventually, the dog woke up and we kept feeding it food. The middle head was still unhappy with the situation, but the other two heads wouldn’t let it do anything. Ourselves, and Atrox ended up giving the dog all of our ration packs and Teila threw in a few of hers to. It was definitely worth it.

Teila then managed to find another hidden lever that opened another door. On the other side of this doorway was our quarry, Krezak, and about a hundred other people. Krezak was chained inside a large, elaborate magic circle that also had sixteen smaller circles around it. Something was being siphoned off of the god and into black spheres in those smaller circles. At first, we assumed it was his power, but that was not quite right. We cast Greater Invisibility on ourselves and flew up to assess the situation. Kaldrene managed to approach the circle without being seen by the hundred or so people milling about this room. There was a barrier preventing us from entering the circle, but Krezak managed to speak to her anyways. He told her to interact with his memories. She went over to one of the spheres and touched it. All four of us saw the vision produced by it.

We saw a bright field filled with flowers singing a happy tune. There was a figure in a dark cloak dancing peacefully in the center. Then there was a shift in the atmosphere. The joyful light produced by the flowers turned into a sorrowful darkness which faded into silence. A person in golden armor came crashing through the sky and landed in the field, leaving a crater from the impact. A creature with many spiked legs crawled out. Both figures then engaged with the creature. During the battle, the flowers started to sing an inspiring tune, but eventually the dark figure was impaled by the creature and with their death, all of the flowers died. The battle between the golden figure and the creature continued and moved away from the field. Awhile later, another person entered the field. They appear to be a regular craftsman. When they saw the body of the dark figure, they rushed over to them and wept. The craftsman took the other person’s cloak and buried the body of their best friend.

Once the vision ended, Krezak told us that we needed to kill his captors in order to free him. We identified 4 priests that seemed to be the ones driving the spell, each next to one segment of the circle. This was when everything started to fall apart, because Zorrias, the consort, and Lita showed up. They directed the a few of the hundred acolytes to go through the portal that lead to the dog’s place. We heard whimpering coming from there as the acolytes began hurting the dog. This enraged Kaldrene, who immediately rushed over to one of the priests attacked. The good news is that Kaldrene killed them very quickly and the barrier around the magic circle weakened somewhat, the bad news is that we were now in a battle with a hundred acolytes, a very powerful divination wizard, whatever Lita is, and three priests.

Zorrias and Lita teleported closer to the rest of the party. We decided to make our way over to one of the farther priests in order to deal with them. The only way we were going to survive this was to release Krezak as quickly as possible. Zorrias cast Foresight on Lita, which was really bad for us. She then did some sort of enhancement to her legs which made them really big and allowed to move very fast. Lita then ran over to Kaldrene and attacked her. Teila cast Haste on Atrox and they managed to reach another of the priests. Atrox attacked them while we cast Flame Strike on our priest. Things were going pretty badly for us, as the many acolytes were doing some serious damage to the others. They could not see us due to the invisibility, so they could not hurt us. Teila used her hourglass from the Baron’s Keep to stop time. She then set of five Fireballs, killing about 70 of the acolytes at once and causing the others to flee in fear. She then went on the attack the priest with her signature, Scorching Ray. Kaldrene managed to get away from Lita and started to make her way towards Zorrias. The Dog had also come out from his room and began to attack the divination wizard. Lita switched targets from Kaldrene to Atrox and Teila. She started to make her way over there. The priest that Atrox was attacking successfully banished him. Kaldrene managed to massively damage Zorrias, who then in turn massively damaged Kaldrene. Teila Fireballed the priest, which caused them to lose concentration and Atrox popped back onto this plane. The fourth priest, which none of us had managed to get to yet, began moving closer to Krezak. We decided to cast a Banishment of our own on the priest we were dealing with, which worked. Their part of the spell failed and the barrier weakened even further. Kaldrene then began to move to intercept the fourth priest. She was moving through the magic circle. Back when the first priest was killed, we were able to enter the barrier around the circle, but movement was slowed. After the second priest was banished, movement inside the barrier was no longer impeded. Zorrias cast Disintegrate on the dog, which they managed to survive. Atrox then killed the third priest, but then right after Lita reached him and killed him. At this point, the magic of the circle was now aiding movement that was towards its center. We were all rushing to get to the fourth priest before they reached Krezak. Kaldrene managed to reach the priest as they grew close to Krezak and attacked them in a rage. Zorrias then killed the dog with another Disintegrate spell. The final priest managed to take the cloak off of Krezak and at that moment Teila managed to launch herself into them and knock them to the ground. Unfortunately, this did not stop the priest from putting on the cloak, which promptly ate him. This is why a mortal shouldn’t try to put on or use divine artifacts. The chances of being eaten or burned away by holy power are very high. At this point, it was only ourselves, Teila, Kaldrene, Krezak, and Lita who had just arrived at the center and Zorrias was still at the edge. We were so close to freeing the god, but we were also very close to failure. The spell containing Krezak had ended, but we still had to break his chains. We healed Kaldrene, as they had the best chance of breaking the chains. Zorrias cast Disintegrate at Kaldrene, who thankfully survived. Kaldrene then grabbed Krezak’s cloak and put it on him, then attempted and failed to break the chains. Teila cast Haste on Kaldrene, and Lita attacked both Kaldrene and ourselves. Then Zorrias cast Disintegrate on us, and we died.

We could feel our souls drifting back towards the Realm of Dreams, when a dark tendril reached out, grabbed us, and dragged us back to the material plane. We awoke in our own body again. The fight was over. After we died, Kaldrene managed to break the stone that the chains were connected to, freeing Krezak. As soon as he was free, Zorrias grabbed Lita and teleported away. It seems he also managed to grab some of our dust on his way out. This scares us. He could so many terrible things to us with that dust. Hopefully we can somehow stop his before he can use it.

Once Krezak was free, darkness swept the area. Teila sat down, exhausted, and Kaldrene then made her way to Krezak and grabbed his leg. Krezak removed Kaldrene, who then proceeded to latch onto his arm. He then pealed Kaldrene off of his arm, held her by the wrists, and dropped her. Kaldrene kept pestering him, so he cast Silence on her. Teila then asked him to bring Atrox and ourselves back. Krezak obliged. Kaldrene briefly managed to get out of the sphere of silence and asked him to bring the dog back too, which he did. When the dog was resurrected, they were brought back as a puppy. After taking some time to pet the dog, which is very helpful when one is trying to get over being recently disintegrated. Krezak then offered us each a minor boon and a gift for the whole party. He enhanced our magical trait that gave us darkvision out to 300 feet and that we could share with one party member for a bit to now give all of our party members that darkvision as long as they are within a mile of us. Our darkvision can now also see through magical darkness. He then gave us each a playing card that we could rip in half or put under out pillow when we wanted to redeem our boon. Kaldrene used her immediately to ask for the equivalent of a shard from him, which he gave, and she immediately ate. Kaldrene then tried to ask some other questions, but Krezak would not answer her. Teila then gave her boon to Kaldrene, who then used it to get answers to her questions about this world. Krezak’s answers were, well, we are not sure what to call them. Mind-blowing? World-shattering?

Anyways, here is what he told us. First, that Kaldrene’s fiancé, Relium, is truly dead. Then, that when Kaldrene was alive, this world did not exist. It was a barren, dying planet far away from the influence of the gods. Seven gods decided that this world would be used as their final refuge and as a vessel for their plan to fix everything. They left their previous home and came here with the last seed that the Elders’ did not have, the most important seed, the Seed of Good. They locked themselves away from the rest of the universe and began to put their plan in motion that would enable them to defeat the Elders. Yna, who was apparently previously known as Metorse, was the one who came up with the plan. They set up observation posts that have been watching and collecting data from the Elders’ invasion. The plan was to wait here for a prophesized Thrice-Cursed soul to emerge, one that could turn back time to the beginning of the invasion. The gods could then use the information gathered in the observatories to beat the Elders. For this Thrice-Cursed Soul to emerge, all of the gods but one had to die. Krezak is the only one who was to be left alive, and he is the only one who will not be able to return with the others if the plan succeeds.

Krezak then left. Now, when Krezak mentioned a Thrice-Cursed Soul, it rang a bell, so to speak. Back in the Realm of Nightmares in the Baron’s keep, Teila was described as a “Thrice-Cursed Scholar”. Given that the descriptions of the rest of us were accurate, this leads the entire party (though Teila needed some convincing) to believe that Teila is the Thrice-Cursed Soul that Krezak spoke of. We currently have no way of proving this, but unless we run into another, we shall assume that she is.

We then made our way Nali’s mansion. The gate opened for us, and a snake with a little necktie led us inside. There, we met with Nali who returned Kaldrene and Teila to their true races. She offered us a place to rest, and that is what we are doing now. Tomorrow, we plan to go to the queen with what happened. Kaldrene wants to go alone, completely disarmed, have the queen herself cast Zone of Truth on her, and tell the queen everything that has happened. We can’t think of a better plan, so that is likely what we shall do. Though maybe we shall send Jinx with Kaldrene so we shall know if she gets arrested or killed.


	20. Date: Zarantyr 15, 335

When we awoke, Nali had a very large, fancy meal brought out for us. There were even fresh greens available, which are quite the rarity. Teila wanted to buy some spell ingredients and asked Nali where she could go to purchase them. None of us really new much about this town as we had spent most of our time here in jail or in battle. She said that Teila could get these items from her at fair market value. Teila then asked her for “special” chalk. She wanted magic chalk, but this set off what we felt was an uncomfortable moment where Nali seemed to be hitting on Teila. After that, we told Nali about everything that had happened since we last saw her. When we brought up that Zorrias had taken some of our dust, she mentioned how some kalashatar dust had shown up on the market that morning. This is even more terrifying then just Zorrias having some. If anyone could get their hands on it, we might be in a lot of trouble. Nali informed us that we might be able to ward ourselves from the potential effects of the dust if we could get our hands on some. We shall have to see if we can.

Kaldrene then discovered that she can get ink from her familiar, which is a tiny, godless flying squid. Teila was very happy at this, as she has a great need for ink, especially magic ink, which this appears to be as it can defy gravity. Kaldrene then went on to ask Nali to enchant her armor similarly to how Atrox’s armor is because it made everyone look better. Teila was very suspicious at this description, as it sounded a lot like being charmed to her, but she could not prove it, so Kaldrene went ahead and got it enchanted. It does giver her more protection now. Throughout this exchange, Nali also took the opportunity to hit on Atrox as well.

It was time to head to the palace and speak to the queen. We eventually went with Kaldrene’s original plan. It did not sit well with us to send one person into a potentially dangerous situation alone, but there were little better options. With only one person going in, there is the potential for the rest of us to rescue them if something goes wrong. Kaldrene was the best person to send in completely unarmed as she is both the most charismatic of all of us and the one with the best chance of survival. Teila and Kaldrene decided to swap familiars, so that both groups could know what is happening with the other.

Kaldrene entered the throne room, completely unarmed and wearing wizard’s manacles, which suppressed her magic. She managed to convince the queen to cast Zone of Truth on her herself and not have her consort do it. Once the spell had been cast, she told the queen everything that had transpired. She didn’t quite believe Kaldrene at first, but once she confirmed that Krezak had been imprisoned with the very young, very new high priest, she became furious at Zorrias, who then promptly disappeared. At some point during the conversation, he had teleported away and left and illusory duplicate behind. The queen the freed Kaldrene from the manacles and hired our party to hunt down and kill Zorrias. Once we killed him, she wanted us to use a magic red hook on the body that would bind his soul to the body. This way, she could easily resurrect him and enact her revenge. We feel sorry for the treatment that Zorrias is going to endure at her hand once we defeat him, since he has been likely possessed this entire time. The queen gave Kaldrene some magic items that would help us defeat him. The first was a silver arrow that would severely weaken Zorrias. Next were some magic amulets that would hide us from Zorrias’s sight. She also gave us some of Zorrias’s blood and hair to help us find him and a special badge that would let the guards know that we were operation on the queen’s authority. The queen also gave us some more information on her sister, Lita. Lita is absurdly strong, and the queen does not think that we are capable of killing her. She had previously made a contract with a demon that enabled her to eat and gain strength from the souls of other people. This is why she reads as an amalgamation of so many different creatures. She has eaten and absorbed the souls of all of these creatures. Before the conversation with the queen was over, Kaldrene felt something attacking her soul. Lita was trying to eat her phylactery. She did not succeed in it yet, but if Kaldrene couldn’t get it back soon, she would be in trouble.

After we reconvened, we payed Lisath a visit so that we could finally get paid. She gave us each a magic item. We received a magic amulet that would aid in our spellcasting. Atrox got a magic sword that deals thunder damage and has an invisible blade. Kaldrene was given a magic sword that could heal her and her allies a little bit when she attacked. Teila acquired an upgraded spell book. After this we split off to do some other things.

Atrox visited a blacksmith because he wanted to see what could be done with those red ingots that he acquired back in the Barron’s Keep. The blacksmith was a yellow tiefling, who was a master of his craft. He identified the red ingots as condensed nightmare. At first, he confused Atrox’s new sword with only a handle, and said that he could make a blade for it out of the ingots. After Atrox told him what it was, he came up with another idea that involved the sword, the ingots, and the sapphires that Atrox had also gotten from the Baron’s Keep. He commissioned the sword and let the materials there for the teifling to work on.

Teila had the most eventful time out of all of us. She made her way to the local wizard college to try and copy down their macroscroll. When she reached the gates, she was initially turned away because of her attire. It apparently did not meet their dress codes. Her robes were not fancy for them because it was fashion week at the college. Though the doorman also mentioned that every week was fashion week, so it is likely just an excuse for them to be even more pretentious than usual. Teila’s response was to simply charm the doorman into letting her in. A little bit after she entered, a small group of students called her out for her dull clothing. She simply charmed them in order to get them to stop bugging her, but that didn’t exactly work out as she had hoped. Instead of leaving her alone, they were now raving about how what Teila was wearing was the peak of fashion and they were insisting that she go down the runway. She managed to get away from them by promising to come back and do it later, a promise that she had absolutely no intention of keeping. After escaping the students, she made her way towards the restricted section on the school, where she ran into an iron golem in her way. She tried to convince it to let her pass, but it did not work. The golem alerted the Archmage of the school that she was there and trying to gain access. The Archmage arrived soon after. He was an old halfling and was amused that Teila wanted to copy the macroscroll. He did not think that she was capable of such a thing and agreed to let her try. He led her into the room and past the scroll’s guardians, which would not attack you if you did not look at them. They were some sort of shadow demons. The macroscroll was the scroll for the spell Time Stop, which Teila was very excited about. She copied it down and took notes. She proved the Archmage wrong and was able to understand most of the scroll, which is very impressive. The Archmage then copied Teila’s notes using a spell. Teila really wanted this spell as it would make her life easier, so she made a deal with the Archmage. In exchange for the spell, Teila was to take care of one of the Archmage’s creations. It was a small dog that had wings and horns. One wing was bat-like and the other was feathered. It was also now tied to Teila’s soul. It could not die before her. Teila then Dimension Doored out of there with the dog to avoid the student’s outside.

Ourselves and Kaldrene had a very uneventful trip to go retrieve the shards. Kaldrene ended up eating two more of our remaining three shards with everyone’s consent. We only have the life shard now, simply because we might want it. It depends on what we use our boon from Krezak for.

Once we reconvened, Teila immediately gave the dog to Kaldrene, who enthusiastically agreed. As soon as she agreed, the dog was now bound to her soul instead of Teila’s. We then settled down to rest at Nali’s mansion so that we could prepare the spell Scrying so that we could potentially find Zorrias. When we were all asleep, we met with Overpower like we normally do. We had to defend Kaldrene’s dreams from many Nightmare Spirits that they had summoned. It was a grueling ordeal, as the spirits were just barely too much for us, but we made it through. We all felt a little bit stronger after this.

It was now time to track down Zorrias. Instead of trying to scry the divination wizard directly, as he likely has many strong protections against that, at Kaldrene’s suggestion we scryed her phylactery. We saw it in what at first appeared to be an empty room with damp walls. We could also faintly hear children laughing. Then the phylactery moved a bit and we realized that the room was not actually empty, but that we could not see the occupants likely due to anti-scrying charms. We asked one of Nali’s servants about where in the city there are schools located near a water source, and they were able to identify three possible locations: Graz’zt’s School for Excellent Children, Asmodeus’ Academy for Structured Schooling, and Drizzt’s Primary school. Kaldrene was able to determine that her phylactery was not near Asmodeus’ Academy, so that crossed one off on our list. Atrox thought that since Lita was part Nightmare Spirit and Zorrias was possessed by one, if we put some dream helixes in the water sources that it would draw them out. We left Jinx by the first area so that Teila could keep watch there while we went to other area. It was a good idea, but it did not work. During our search, Lita was slowly eating Kaldrene’s soul. If we wanted to save it, we would have to hurry, so we chose one of the schools. We entered Graz’zt’s School and encountered a teacher at the entrance. They did not want us to cause a disturbance because there was a school tournament going on, but they let us in and took us to the basement. The walls of the basement looked very similar to those that we saw, so were likely in the right place. Then, Teila who was watching the other area through their familiar, saw Lita run out of the school there gnawing on Kaldrene’s phylactery. Right at that moment, she succeeded in devouring Kaldrene’s soul. She immediately went unconscious due to the shock of it, but luckily she woke up soon after. Kaldrene is ok for now, but we will need to figure out a way to get her soul back or some other way to stabilize her, or she will eventually fade.

Teila managed to find a secret door in the basement, and when we entered through it, we found Zorrias. He was on top of two pillars that were in the center of the room and were about twenty feet tall. There were also four other red pillars in the room that were made out of nightmares. We exchanged a few quick words, but then Zorrias attempted to disintegrate Atrox, but luckily he withstood the blow. Atrox drank a healing potion and began to move towards the wizard along with Kaldrene. Teila tried to Slow Zorrias, but it failed and he responded by slowing Atrox. He had also cast Foresight on himself, which made him difficult to hit. Unfortunately, none of us had a bow nor had we bought one, so our only option was for someone to get close and stab him with the magic arrow that the queen had given us, which would not be easy since he was on top of a pillar. We attempted to cast Hold Person on Zorrias, but it failed. He responded by casting Sunburst at all of us, which caused Atrox and ourselves to be temporarily blinded. Atrox managed to overcome his blindness and threw the arrow up the Kaldrene who had at this point climbed the second pillar next to Zorrias. She then proceeded to stab him with it. It hurt him quite a lot and he lost his Foresight. Zorrias then tried to kill Kaldrene using a powerful necrotic spell and when then failed, he tried to blow her off of the pillar, which also failed. At this point, Atrox had joined Kaldrene on top of the pillar and began attacking Zorrias as well. He did enough damage that Zorrias began to change.

Huge horns grew out of his head, wings grew out of his back, and his whole body grew. Kaldrene attacked him and discovered that he had put up a very strong magical shield, which made him very difficult to hit. Ourselves and Teila kept attacking from a distance. Then Zorrias showed a rather disturbing ability. He cast some arcane bolts at us that gave us vulnerabilities to different things. The then followed up with an attack that used whatever we had just become vulnerable to. Luckily, the vulnerabilities did not seem to be permanent, as after the battle they wore off. Zorrias successfully then knocked us out, and we were out for the rest of the fight. The others kept attacking Zorrias, Teila with her magic and the others with their swords. Eventually, Atrox managed to take him out, but the fight did not end there.

Just like what happened with the Baron, a Greater Nightmare Spirit erupted out from Zorrias’s body. Some red tendrils also spawned out of the pillar that we were closest too and started dragging us towards it. There was also a portal on the other side of the room from the entrance opened. It seemed to be connected to the pillars. Atrox kept attacking the creature, while Kaldrene jumped off of the pillar to attack the portal in an effort to save us. It was likely that once the portal was destroyed, the pillars would again become inactive. As she attacked the portal, she heard a voice tell her that she would pay the ultimate price and that no one would remember her. It was likely the Neverdreamed themselves on the other side. Teila managed to break the pillar that was trying to eat us, and when she did the tendrils disappeared. A giant hand then came through the portal and grabbed Kaldrene. It started to pull her through, but she managed to break the portal before it could. The hand became severed, but it was still animate. Kaldrene managed to kill it and get away from it. During this, Atrox was attacking Zorrias with the technique that he discovered when fighting the Baron. He was shoving dream Helixes into it, and he weakened it enough so that Teila could finish it off with a Scorching Ray.

With the creature dead and the portal closed, we were free to explore the area. Though before we explored, Kaldrene stuck the red hook into Zorrias’s body and Atrox requested that we harvest as many of the helixes from the creature as we could, so we did. There were two rooms that were adjacent to the central room. One contained a scrying pool that held a worrisome image. In it, we saw Lita in one of the town squares building an obelisk. It had helical patterns on it and red tendrils of something flowing towards it. There was also a Greater Nightmare Spirit that was doing something. At the time, we could not remember what we had just watched it do. Teila managed to guess that the obelisk was something that would summon the Neverdreamed into this plane, which would be extremely bad. The other room was a workshop that Zorrias had set up. Teila found a few useful things in there. The first was what appeared to be schematics to the obelisk and the second was 10 syringes filled with some serum. Teila decided to inject herself with one of them. When she came back over to the scrying pool, she could remember what it was that the Greater Nightmare Spirit was doing. It was eating people and using their essence to power the obelisk. We all quickly took one of the doses. We then took a look around Zorras’s workshop and found a vial that contained a small amount of our dust. Hopefully this will be enough to ward ourselves from its effects, but we still need to learn how to do such a thing.

We are taking a bit of time now to rest a recover from the recent battle. We need to stop what Lita is doing, but we do not think that we can do it alone. We are going to try and find some allies to help us. Lisath might be willing and the queen might also be able to give us aid. Hopefully we can succeed, but if we can’t win this fight, we are not completely out of option. Atrox and ourselves still have our boons from Krezak. If things go too poorly for us, we might be able to use those to win.


End file.
